Featured Work: dream knots and badge juice by Basie Allen

This poem had original plans to be published in the No. 14 issue Free Loader, but Beacon Quarterly and I decided that it's nature would be seen best in the mirror of today. In order to combat systems of violence against peoples of color, we need agency and resistance from every angle. Protests. Looting. Peaceful Sit-ins. Talks. Laws Changed. New Paintings. New Poems. Good Food.  We need everyone in tandem working together, and I look forward to being there with you at every step of the way. Thank you.

Words by Basie Allen, Basieallen.com 

Photography by Basie Allen

dream knots and badge juice 

    🔿

from inside the lyric of a wound

stood the waiting side of a podium

and me 

on the verge of voice  

standing before a hall-full of cops

sipping on badge juice 

         their insignia lit eyes, fixed

          on there having to be a problem 

          stood in a semi-circle

         like seeds to a halved melon

behind the cops—

in the emotional bleachers 

of the precinct 

was our people

the other 

half-melon’d-half

the melonated  half

oxidized 

browned

beautiful 

their ears began to rebound my words

as I sang

“police precincts need to blossom 

into the epicenter of art movements

and not just sink as the lottery of petal-ated pain

where flowers don’t give a bloom about us

—if there’s going to be any change 

in the way we whine around the color blue 

we need comradely in the heart of the precinct

instead of chainmail and locked bar arms

we need to incentivize our police to encourage themselves.

we need pay raises for every non violent month.

we need added vacation time for every cop who works with local artists.

 we need new boots for good deeds.

a new horse for every time we don't need to call a hearse.

gold stars for every gold cap that isn’t fired. 

we need to be melting the unused bullets into gold caps for crooked teeth and have a contest

to see which cop can smile and imitate the cosmos best. 

we need to turn the locker room talk out

with the same clout that cuddles 

up to the shoulders of autonomy. 

we need to re-cleave and learn how to learn.

we need tree and dirt lessons.

but in this wound

I’m still behind the podium

and the precinct is still split 

into two melon’d halves

my voice 

still sung in the air  

“hatred ferments in darkness

and the best way to ruin the speed of growing violence

is with light”

turn on the light!

turn on the light!

   🔿

sirens heaved

outside my window. 

they flew in circles 

with badges on their breasts

the reflection lined the sidewalk 

like lights lines inverted 

into shadows at the bottom of water  

they swirled above

and saw a corpse below

as they flew down

teetering from wing to wing

like speed skaters shifting from leg to leg 

one of them turned up the static on their walky talky radio

to drown the glittering pain now pouring

out the hole in the neighborhood 

                                       -did you see what happened?-

 buried away

  in the single blink a secret needs to hide—  

    a nightstick 

           is limping 

     into the damp end 

      of a bleached christening  

                                  - who was it?-

a cold—

the color of teething beasts

                                                                   - was anyone home?- 

  I only heard eyes crawling 

             into the fractures of denial  

                    What else did you hear?

                       -I  h e a r d-   

                                  they left the open mouth 

     of their radios running

                      so puddles of static 

would drown out the hummed lyrics 

     of tragedy tunes

           -I  h e a r d-    

-I  h e a r r d - 

 

they left their radios scraping at the sound

of open skies

       so the static of blue wrinkles could glitter

            over the circled ears—

             of those who came to see 

                             -I  h e a r d-

they rolled the shimmer of broken silver

                 on the ground like cobalt demons

sprinkling dice in their hands 

                              -so they could blame the peopled odds on chance-

                                                    they let the blue static spill over the crescent children

those mouths were at the beginning of their smiles 

                   -I  h e a r d-   

the static had been sounded like hearse’s 

    pummeling over pebbles in the yard

                        as it rolled up to the mortuary

-I  h e a r d-   

             all that was left

 was the static 

      like bad advice telling the community to 

                                     ssSssHHHHHhhhhhhh

      🔿

from inside the lyric of a wound

I called the nearest precinct of trees

to tell them I found their birds

but all I got was static

and the sound of vultures

pecking at melon-ated fruit

I hung on

and turned on the light

and then I hung up

and untied my dream knots